Microsoft planning to automatically offer Windows 10 to existing PCs

[Executioner]

http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/29/9639414/microsoft-windows-10-automatic-update-recommended

Starting early next year, Microsoft says it’s planning to re-categorize Windows 10 as a "recommended update" in its Windows Update system. That means the Windows 10 upgrade process will download and start automatically on thousands of machines. "A user will be presented with a choice to install Windows 10," explains Terry Myerson, Microsoft’s head of Windows and devices, in an interview with The Verge. "They’ll come back to their PC and there will be a dialog where they can choose to upgrade to Windows 10 or choose not to upgrade to Windows 10."

Desperation?

Myerson says Microsoft’s current plan involves it only presenting this dialog once to end users. Windows 10 will automatically download and start the upgrade process, depending on your Windows Update settings, but you can opt out and not receive nagging prompts to update. Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users on a metered connection will have to turn off automatic updates to prevent the Windows 10 installer from downloading automatically. Windows 10 is currently a free upgrade for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users for a year, but Myerson didn't want to comment on the company's plans after July 29th 2016.

I guess MS is not happy that people are still using 7 and 8.

 

[Ketchup]

From what I have seen so far, this approach does not sound any different than what is currently being done.

 

[JackMDS]

http://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2015/10/29/making-it-easier-to-upgrade-to-windows-10/

 

[Magic Carpet]

Surprised, Microsoft isn't taking care of the XP/Vista users.... Quite a bit still using those dinos :]

 

[MustISO]

I've turned off anything except the security updates.

 

[Executioner]

I've turned off anything except the security updates.

Same here. I get my security updates with Autopatcher.

 

[postmortemIA]

http://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2015/10/29/making-it-easier-to-upgrade-to-windows-10/

nice note about pirates

One of the more interesting learnings from the upgrade is the creative efforts which non-Genuine customers have gone to, to initiate the upgrade process on Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 – and then how many have purchased Genuine Windows 10 activation through the Windows 10 store.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Ugn, as the guy everyone calls when they need help, I'm not looking forward to this. Well, if 10 is better than 8, I guess it will beat dealing with people who currently have 8 and call me. That OS makes me want to smash my head on a cinder block wall. It's so ridiculously frustrating to try to do anything with it.

The problem is the idea of doing an in place upgrade. That is just never a good idea and never has been and never will be. There's too many things that can go wrong, such as incompatible drivers, software, etc.

 

[postmortemIA]

Ugn, as the guy everyone calls when they need help, I'm not looking forward to this. Well, if 10 is better than 8, I guess it will beat dealing with people who currently have 8 and call me. That OS makes me want to smash my head on a cinder block wall. It's so ridiculously frustrating to try to do anything with it.

The problem is the idea of doing an in place upgrade. That is just never a good idea and never has been and never will be. There's too many things that can go wrong, such as incompatible drivers, software, etc.

Yes, weird that Microsoft is essentially throwing non-tech savvy people under bus.
There's no way that upgrade "just works" foe billions of OEM PCs full of crapware. And you reboot into working system that is ready to use right away.
That is, if you come from Windows 7 system...upgrade from Windows 8 should be bit better.

It will take long time for older PCs with physical hard drives too..

 

[JEDIYoda]

Microsoft is the best!!!

 

[Red Squirrel]

Yes, weird that Microsoft is essentially throwing non-tech savvy people under bus.
There's no way that upgrade "just works" foe billions of OEM PCs full of crapware. And you reboot into working system that is ready to use right away.
That is, if you come from Windows 7 system...upgrade from Windows 8 should be bit better.

It will take long time for older PCs with physical hard drives too..

Not to mention people with slow internet, or worse, capped internet. They'll get a ridiculously huge bill and not understand why. This is going to be a shit storm.

 

[RampantAndroid]

Not to mention people with slow internet, or worse, capped internet. They'll get a ridiculously huge bill and not understand why. This is going to be a shit storm.

Do some ISPs exempt traffic to microsoft? I know mobile operators exempt update traffic often (and Tmobile exempts all music streaming from their caps.)

 

[JEDIYoda]

The average person should have no trouble at all installing windows on their PC!!

 

[PliotronX]

Ugn, as the guy everyone calls when they need help, I'm not looking forward to this. Well, if 10 is better than 8, I guess it will beat dealing with people who currently have 8 and call me. That OS makes me want to smash my head on a cinder block wall. It's so ridiculously frustrating to try to do anything with it.

The problem is the idea of doing an in place upgrade. That is just never a good idea and never has been and never will be. There's too many things that can go wrong, such as incompatible drivers, software, etc.

Same here. The upgrade process produces a glitchy machine about 1 out of 5 times just in my small sample size of people I regularly see. The clean installation on my own laptop is primo OTOH. I keep getting queried by various people at our largest client about plans to upgrade their Enterprise systems. We are in this precarious situation now where the upgraded 10 systems have demonstrated that there are too many potential issues yet we are not going to redeploy a thousand workstations and laptops for an OS that offers nothing to enterprise customers so 8.1 stays. I really don't look forward to it either for the individual customers. We've had about a dozen victims of the upgrade since July 29th usually requiring a pricey reload of the OS.

 

[TeknoBug]

Do some ISPs exempt traffic to microsoft? I know mobile operators exempt update traffic often (and Tmobile exempts all music streaming from their caps.)

That's an interesting question, highly doubt Telus does but I'd have to ask.

 

[Ham n' Eggs]

Well hopefully my remaining windows 7 install is safe. I've completely shut off any updating on windows 7, auto-checking for updating, etc. I run a manual check once a week or so and then cross check anything offered with Berryracer's great thread:

Updates to hide to prevent Windows 10 Upgrade / Disable Telemetry

which he seems to be keeping nicely up to date.


The rate of windows 10 adoption is slowing and that could be why they're going to start pushing it using this tactic. Hopefully people who really suck at computers don't get an unintentional windows 10 upgrade. If my mom gets this offer she's going to have absolutely no idea what to do. uuuggghh

 

[Mem]

Yes, weird that Microsoft is essentially throwing non-tech savvy people under bus.
There's no way that upgrade "just works" foe billions of OEM PCs full of crapware. And you reboot into working system that is ready to use right away.
That is, if you come from Windows 7 system...upgrade from Windows 8 should be bit better.

It will take long time for older PCs with physical hard drives too..

To be fair you would get the same issue with any OS, no OS can guarantee perfect upgrade, too many unknown variables let alone those non tech users.

 

[Mem]

If my mom gets this offer she's going to have absolutely no idea what to do. uuuggghh

Come on she would, she would call you, that's what my mum has done with WinXP, Win7 and Android so far with any issues or upgrades over the years.

Nothing new there, lets be honest lol.

 

[RampantAndroid]

Well hopefully my remaining windows 7 install is safe. I've completely shut off any updating on windows 7, auto-checking for updating, etc. I run a manual check once a week or so and then cross check anything offered with Berryracer's great thread:

Updates to hide to prevent Windows 10 Upgrade / Disable Telemetry

which he seems to be keeping nicely up to date.


The rate of windows 10 adoption is slowing and that could be why they're going to start pushing it using this tactic. Hopefully people who really suck at computers don't get an unintentional windows 10 upgrade. If my mom gets this offer she's going to have absolutely no idea what to do. uuuggghh

With regards to Windows 10's...I guess it isn't attach rate? Or is it? Anyway...where do you have data on that? Last I saw they were at 110 million a bit ago and saying that they had more Windows 10 machines than they had Windows 7 machines in the same time frame. It's obviously not an apples to apples comparison since it wasn't as easy to go from XP/Vista to Windows 7, but it doesn't sound at all like Windows 10 is a failure either.

For everyone that's avoiding certain updates to avoid Windows 10, my concern here would be whether you're also then skipping on bug fixes/security fixes that are bundled with the updates you're hiding?

 

[JEDIYoda]

Surprised, Microsoft isn't taking care of the XP/Vista users.... Quite a bit still using those dinos :]

why be surprised?? You yourself called it correctly -- dinos.....I know people still usi8ng win2000 and win98, I am surprised Microsoft isn`t taking care of thos people...see my point??

 

[JEDIYoda]

The rate of windows 10 adoption is slowing and that could be why they're going to start pushing it using this tactic. Hopefully people who really suck at computers don't get an unintentional windows 10 upgrade. If my mom gets this offer she's going to have absolutely no idea what to do. uuuggghh

Well duh...at some point it will slow down. Yet I see nothing official stating your hypothesis!

 

[ArisVer]

For everyone that's avoiding certain updates to avoid Windows 10, my concern here would be whether you're also then skipping on bug fixes/security fixes that are bundled with the updates you're hiding?

Which shouldn't be bundled with.....

 

[Ham n' Eggs]

Come on she would, she would call you, that's what my mum has done with WinXP, Win7 and Android so far with any issues or upgrades over the years.

Nothing new there, lets be honest lol.

that's true. I'm not sure I could help her with this one though, it usually takes about 10 minutes to locate the menu or url area in Internet Explorer (tried to get her on firefox but that wasn't happening). I think the trick is for people who don't understand computers but who have memorized how to do specific things... such as "click on this blue icon located in the top right corner of my desktop to read my email", etc.

For these people any request for thinking about the computer system by the OS would lead to instant confusion.

 

[Ham n' Eggs]

With regards to Windows 10's...I guess it isn't attach rate? Or is it? Anyway...where do you have data on that? Last I saw they were at 110 million a bit ago and saying that they had more Windows 10 machines than they had Windows 7 machines in the same time frame. It's obviously not an apples to apples comparison since it wasn't as easy to go from XP/Vista to Windows 7, but it doesn't sound at all like Windows 10 is a failure either.

I few weeks ago I read news articles on how the rate of adoption was slowing down after the initial surge of early adoption. It's still growing but just not at that same fantastic initial rate.

Do you think that Microsoft didn't offer the free upgrade to XP users because those computers are likely to be dinosaurs?

 

[Mem]

I few weeks ago I read news articles on how the rate of adoption was slowing down after the initial surge of early adoption. It's still growing but just not at that same fantastic initial rate.

Do you think that Microsoft didn't offer the free upgrade to XP users because those computers are likely to be dinosaurs?

Probably hardware too old for Win10, my mum is on Win7 and Android, she can't upgrade to Win10 because her PC is too old, but she wants to, we are going to buy her a new modern PC soon, keep her happy lol.

She is not doing bad at 71 with PC skills, some old folks are amazing in how they adapt to new stuff.